Honor 5C launches in Europe: Metal body mid-ranger, £149 price tag

Honor has announced that the Honor 5C will be available from today, 20 June, in the UK and across Europe.

Launched previously in Asia, the European version of the Honor 5C loses the fingerprint scanner on the rear, which Honor says was necessary to hit an aggressive price point.

At £149/€199, the Honor 5C is certainly good value for money, pushing a Kirin 650 octo-core chipset and offering a 5.2-inch Full HD display. There's only 2GB RAM and 16GB storage (with microSD), but you get what you pay for.

There's an 8-megapixel camera on the front and 13-megapixel camera on the rear, both packed with clever features to help you get the best out of your photos. We've been impressed with the attention to detail on previous Honor devices when it comes to the phone, and we wouldn't expect the Honor 5C to be any different.

Impressively, however, this is all crammed into a metal body. The anodised metal back meets a textured edge for grip, resulting in a phone that's a far cry from the cheap plastic devices that used to occupy this price point.

The Honor 5C is up against devices like the Moto G4 and where it really differs is in the software. Where Motorola takes a lean approach to Android, the Honor 5C comes with EMUI 4.1, the skin that Honor and Huawei devices share.

This gives the user interface a full reworking. One of the things we don't like is a aggressive alteration of all the app icons and the loss of the apps tray, but you'll get used to the changes it makes.

The Honor 5C will be available from 20 June through Honor's usual online retail outlets, with vmall.eu, Honor and Huawei's e-store being the first port of call. It also also be available from Amazon.

The Honor 5C will also be available exclusively on Three from August 2016.